regulatory czar
cmonforton | April 4, 2013On this blog, we've not minced words about the damaging impact on new worker safety and other public health regulations by the actions of the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). It began causing trouble for OSHA the moment it was created by President Reagan, and its interference continues to this day.
During those early hope-and-change days, I had my fingers crossed that our new President had a fresh vision about the role of his regulatory czar. But in January 2009 my hope was dashed when President Obama nominated law professor Cass Sunstein to lead OIRA. …
cmonforton | January 30, 2012The Labor Department provided an update on January 20, 2012 to its regulatory agenda, including revised target dates for improved workplace safety and health standards. Several of the rules OSHA now expects to publish in 2012 are regulations the agency previously said would be issued one or two years ago. Missed deadlines, however, are nothing new for OSHA---an agency that has only issued two new major health or safety standards in the last 10 years.
To put these new projections from OSHA in perspective, I'll refer to forecasts made previously by the Obama/Solis Administration in 2009 and…
cmonforton | January 3, 2012When an organization fails to get the little things right, I have difficulty believing they are competent to get the big things right either. That's the way I feel about the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA).
OIRA is part of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), was created by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980, and is charged with reviewing certain proposed federal regulations and approving agencies' requests to collect data from the public. One of OIRA's responsibilities, as outlined in the 1993 Executive Order (EO) 12866, is coordinating the…
cmonforton | November 28, 2011A new report by the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) confirms what some of us have suspected: there's not much difference between the Obama Admininstration's and GW Bush Administration's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) when it comes to meetings with industry lobbyists and giving lip-service to transparency.
In "Behind Closed Doors at the White House," CPR offers a 10-year analysis of the 6,194 draft regulatory actions reviewed by OIRA, a step in the rulemaking process dictated by Executive Order (EO) 12866 for rules of particular significance. Their assessment examined…